Creamed Chipped Beef

hipped beef is thinly sliced or pressed salted and dried beef. Some makers smoke the dried beef for more flavor. The modern product consists of small, thin, flexible leaves of partially dried beef, generally sold compressed together in jars or flat in plastic packets. The processed meat producer Hormel once described it as "an air-dried product that is similar to bresaola, but not as tasty."
Bresaola or brisaola is air-dried, salted beef that has been aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple colour. It is made from top (inside) round, and is lean and tender, with a sweet, musty smell. It originated in Valtellina, a valley in the Alps of northern Italy's Lombardy region. The word comes from the diminutive of Lombard bresada (braised).

U.S. military cuisine: Chipped beef on toast (or creamed chipped beef on toast) is a culinary dish comprising a white sauce and rehydrated slivers of dried beef, served on toasted bread. Hormel recommends flavoring the dish with Worcestershire sauce and dried parsley. In military slang it is commonly referred to by the dysphemism "Sh#t On a Shingle" (SOS)—or, "Stew On a Shingle", "Same Old Stuff", "Something On a Shingle", or occasionally "Save Our Stomachs". Chipped beef is also often served on bagels, English muffins, biscuits, home fries, rice, and in casseroles.


Wentworth and Flexner [Dictionary of American Slang] cite no origin, but noted "shingle" for slice of toast has had "some use since 1935" in the U.S. Army, mostly in the expression "sh#t on a shingle", and the latter had "wide World War II Army use". In the United States, chipped beef on toast was emblematic of the military experience, much as yellow pea soup is in Finland or Sweden. Chipped beef on toast (S.O.S.) is the title of a book of military humor.

In his World War II book Band of Brothers, Stephen E. Ambrose evokes the military basics: "At the end of May, the men of Easy packed up their barracks bags and … [took] a stop-and-go train ride to Sturgis, Kentucky. At the depot Red Cross girls had coffee and doughnuts for them, the last bit of comfort they would know for a month. They marched out to the countryside and pitched up tents, dug straddle trenches for latrines, and ate the Army's favorite meal for troops in the field, creamed chipped beef on toast, universally known as SOS, or Sh#t on a Shingle."


Text Credits: Wikipedia || A Book of Recipes for the Cooking School
Image Credit: A Book of Recipes for the Cooking School page 163